Author statement

“This is not about me or Dr. (James) Sebert. This is about three girls who were brave enough to share the most private and gruesome details of their lives with me in the hopes of affecting change. I cannot sleep at night knowing people like these will be shamed back into silence under our new policy. Free speech has the power to change, the power to reform, but most of all the power to heal. As journalists we cannot reach our full potential when something as vital as free speech is taken from us. At 8 a.m. on March 10 Mr. Wiltzius told our print journalism class we needed to bring the school together. By 3:20 p.m. I came to the realization we had. We truly had.”

Written by Fond du Lac High School senior Tanvi Kumar, the investigative piece documents a prevailing rape culture within the school and its impact on students who are survivors of sexual abuse.

The piece features stories of three rape victims. Their names have been changed in the story.

On Monday Fond du Lac High School Principal Jon Wiltzius told journalism classes new school guidelines require that all stories meet his approval before publication and are subject to rejection.

“This is a reasonable expectation,” Wiltzius said. “My job is to oversee the global impact of everything that occurs within our school and I have to ensure I am representing everyone and there was some questionable content.”

As of 6 p.m. Tuesday the students’ anti-censorship petition posted at change.org had garnered 700 signatures. It specifically petitions Superintendent Dr. James Sebert and each signature is forwarded directly to the superintendent’s email account.

Issues

Sebert said he took issue with a picture on the inside cover that shows a woman described as “laying lifeless” in the middle of cardboard boxes. On that page the editors explain the cover photo selection process and why they rejected that (laying lifeless) picture for the cover.

“The most recent edition raised some questions in my mind after reading it as to interference with the educational process, educational environment, and the rights of other students,” Sebert said in an email to The Reporter.

He points to aspects of “The Rape Joke” article — which includes some graphic description of the types of rape a student endured, a letter from the editors called “The Punchline,” and a Pledge of Allegiance editorial that instructs students on their rights to not stand during the Pledge as questionable material for a school publication. Sebert said he and Wiltzius met with Matthew Smith, the print journalism teacher at the high school and adviser to the magazine’s staff, to discuss the issues.

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“Cardinal Columns is created as part of the print journalism class at Fond du Lac High School,” Sebert wrote. “District resources are utilized and the publication represents the school and the district. The guidelines created will ensure this publication as well as any school-sponsored publications are reviewed by the principal prior to print and publication. This is a reasonable expectation for a school-sponsored publication.”

School Board policy, adopted in 1988 outlines expectations for student publications and states they are subject to school guidelines as determined by the principal.

The principal may refuse to publish any materials for numerous reasons, according to the new school guidelines.

Author fires back

The controversy has spurred a flurry of comments at the petition site as well as Twitter account @Cardinal Columns and Kumar’s account @Tanviikumar , where she fired back in a publicly-posted letter to Sebert. In it she states the article had “a lasting effect on this student body and inspired many people.”

Kumar said she was repulsed by the behavior exhibited by people in the high school, pointing to a supposedly student-run twitter account called “Ethan the Rapist,” that pokes fun at a very specific rape incident and rape in general.

She said Wiltzius told students he wanted the paper to be more positive and “to bring people together.”

“This story is not false, defamatory, libelous, vulgar, or profane. Unless you view survivors of horrendous atrocities speaking out against a culture that oppresses them as ‘profane,’ or ‘vulgar’ rather than revolutionary or novel,” she wrote.

Journalistic excellence

Rachel Schneider, editor-in-chief of the magazine along with Kumar, said some teachers were reading the article aloud in their classroom, holding it up as a piece of journalistic excellence.

“We are the students that know what is happening, what is going on at Fondy (high school), and we heard this (rape jokes) was one of the issues,” Schneider said. “If we know it and the staff knows it, why aren’t we saying it? We are the voice. If they censor it, we don’t have a voice.”

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Cardinal Columns art designer, 18-year-old senior Austin Klewicki, said other articles written about school issues did not raise eyebrows. He spoke about the newly-imposed censorship rule at the Monday meeting of the Fond du Lac Board of Education.

“There have been stories on bomb threats, school store theft, drug dealers in school, a gay student coming out, and none of those rose a red flag. This story actually helped people, so I am confused,” he said.

Since the article was published Klewicki said he has not heard any rape jokes in school.

Staff writer, 18-year-old senior Samantha Cass, said kids are being taught about safe sex in health class but they don’t discuss rape or even define it.

“Kids are having sex in high school and some don’t even know they were raped,” she said.

“We are the people that can explain rape isn’t OK,” said another staff writer, 17-year-old junior Cory Scherer. “If you aren’t clawing and getting beaten up, people think it’s not rape.”

As Cardinal Columns adviser Smith said everyone he has spoken to at the high school and in the community has given high praise to Kumar’s work.

“I think we did exactly what any newsroom would do. We had serious discussions about the article before it ran,” Smith said. “The power of the subject and the importance of the piece to help people can play a role in the language used and it was not vulgar and for the most part all the words were necessary.”

The new guidelines will not change the stories students report or how he teaches journalism, Smith emphasized.

“They (the students) hold themselves to amazingly high standards and their use of critical thinking makes me really proud,” Smith said. “They have become very collaborative and they do a great job of exemplifying school goals.”

No smoking gun

Vince Filak, a professor of journalism at University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and a recent guest lecturer for Fondy High journalism students, has seen this issue played out before, but it usually involved a satirical piece gone wrong — not a well-researched article with multiple, expert sources, he said.

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“I was reading the article looking for a smoking gun. Oh, God did they include some kind of rape joke or name somebody, but there wasn’t anything that made me wince,” he said.

While the topic may make people uncomfortable, he believes it is one worth reporting and questions why the administration would react this way to “good journalism.”

“The new policy has a lot of impact I don’t think administrators — when they apply it — fully understand what they are doing to students,” Filak said. “Open discourse and freedom of the press leads to incredible journalism and instead they are basically telling students they don’t trust them.”

Wiltzius said he has had no complaints about the stories printed in the February publication, but he has had issues in the past with some of the articles that have appeared in Cardinal Columns.

“We want a process in place so the building principal has oversight and guidance about the messages we are sending out into the community,” he said.

ASTOP support

The principal said he is also aware that the rape joke connotation exists in the school environment and they are working hard to educate students and staff to be respectful.

Linda Selk-Yerges, executive director of ASTOP, a Fond du Lac non-profit organization dedicated to aiding victims of sexual assault, said she picked up 30 copies of the article to distribute to staff and her board of directors. ASTOP prevention educator Courtney Kolb is quoted in the story.

“I am very proud of what Tanvi did. She took a subject that you can tell is very polarizing and people don’t want to talk about and she really put it out there. The things she said are not lies,” Selk-Yerges said.

She quoted statistics that one out of four females and one out of six males are sexually assaulted before their 18th birthday.

“This is not fiction, this is real, so the (high school) population reading this story is perfect, as well as the adults in these students’ lives so they know what these kids are up against,” Selk-Yerges said.

School Board President Elizabeth Hayes said she objected to the headline “The Rape Joke” because people might not understand it, as well as the article on the Pledge of Allegiance.

“This publication is supported by taxpayer funds and it should be held to a high standard,” Hayes said. “And we should also be encouraging students to hold high standards of respect.”